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[greybone]

Hi,

I've been enjoying Media Center for years and have always had a main stationary computer with all my files serving as a media library for my living room laptop/tv.

This has been working perfectly until I moved to my current location, where I have the following options for connecting the two computers:
- Wireless network that suddenly drops to 5-6 Mbit for no good reason despite hours of tweaking the wireless router
- Wire-based network through the electric grid that ALSO suddenly drops to 5-6 Mbit for no good reason

The net result is that streaming any sort of video will work flawlessly 80% of the time, but then suddenly it will start skipping sound and video, and this last for 10-15 seconds at a time.

I realize this is not a problem with Media Center itself, but are there any settings I can tweak to make the client buffer or pre-read much more at a time to overcome my crappy network?

Both the main computer and laptop are running media center 17, and I have mounted the same drive on the laptop which might be part of the problem?

Edit: To add to this I've also tried without the drive mounted, which seems to trigger streaming, but it's still very choppy.

[greybone]

Anyone back from easter who has some tips on this issue?

[MrC]

Ethernet networking is *very* unforgiving of problems at the lower physical layers (bad or noisy cables, problematic switches or routers, dropped wireless association).

So, first test with standard wire, a known good Ethernet cable.  If that has problems, your issues are higher in the network stack.

[greybone]

Ethernet networking is *very* unforgiving of problems at the lower physical layers (bad or noisy cables, problematic switches or routers, dropped wireless association).

So, first test with standard wire, a known good Ethernet cable.  If that has problems, your issues are higher in the network stack.

Yeah, I have tested with Cat5 which worked flawlessly so I know the wireless/electricity grid solution is bad, but my question is if there are any settings I can do to make MC buffer a lot more at a time.

80% of the time the 'available' speed should be 3-10 times what's needed to actually stream the content, the only problems are the spikes.

[MrC]

Yeah, I have tested with Cat5 which worked flawlessly so I know the wireless/electricity grid solution is bad, but my question is if there are any settings I can do to make MC buffer a lot more at a time.

It's like asking if there's anything you can do to make the broken-legged horse go faster.

[CountryBumkin]

I had some network issues a while back that sound liek your complaints that traced to Not having "Flow Control" enabled, and having "Jumbo packets" enabled.
See http://www.intel.com/support/network/adapter/pro100/sb/CS-029402.htm

[greybone]

It's like asking if there's anything you can do to make the broken-legged horse go faster.

I get what you're getting at, but this isn't about fixing a broken network. I've tried that plenty and regular Cat5 is not possible. It's about tweaking MC in a way to work around the broken network.
If I for example could tell MC to 'buffer locally up to 500 MB from the moment I press play' it would mostly eliminate this problem, but I'm not aware of any such settings.

I had some network issues a while back that sound liek your complaints that traced to Not having "Flow Control" enabled, and having "Jumbo packets" enabled.
See http://www.intel.com/support/network/adapter/pro100/sb/CS-029402.htm

Thanks, I'll look into this as well!

[greybone]

i tried out a few more connection tweaks, but unfortunately my network is still crap
Guess this is a feature request unless no one knows of any ways to tweak it.